Projects Summer Sessions 2011

As the outside temperature rises, so does it rise inside the V2_Lab – the 2011 Summer Sessions have begun!

Will this year’s Summer Sessions result in projects as successful as last year’s experiments in wearable technology, augmented reality and ecology were? Their proposals bode well for an exciting presentation of the results in September. Three individual artists and two collectives were selected to realize their proposals at the V2_Lab this summer.

Julie Legault’s project will give V2_’s hard-working developers something to sink their teeth into – she will be creating a watch that indicates time based on the wearer’s heartbeat. Kasia Molga’s installation might not indicate time as Julie Legault’s project, but will certainly raise a feeling of urgency. Her Oil Compass will interactively visualize oil spills using real-time, real-life information. The installation is being produced in the wake of Open_Sailing’s Protei project, also being worked on this summer at V2_. VJ/designers Olav Huizer and Jelle Valk team up with hardware developer Marcel de Vries to create an augmented reality project. They'll attempt to take AR technology a step further by create a method to map projection in a live setting. Another exciting project underway is Xiaowen Zhu’sWearable Urban Routine. This Chinese artist was the first recipient of the TASML/DSL Artist Residence Award, and we are delighted that she is coming to realize her new work at V2_ as part of this year’s Summer Sessions. Residents of Rotterdam might come run into Xiaowen Zhu this summer, wearing a big hat equipped with a build-in camera and a projector, which she uses to repeatedly trace the same route through the city over and over. Wearable Urban Routineis inspired by Kaihōgyō, an extreme form of ascetic training in which Japanese Buddhist monks ran the same marathons for a 1,000 times along the same route over seven years. Finally, we look forward to host Meg Grant, Anja Hertenberger, Ricardo O'Nascimento and Leonie Urff from the E-Textile Workspace, who will collaboratively create a new project in wearable technology which combines the best of all individual participants’ expertise’s.

You can follow all of the above-mentioned projects’ progress during the next few months on our website. In September, the artists will present the outcomes of their Summer Session residency in a dazzling Test_Lab program at V2_ in Rotterdam and during ISEA2011 in Istanbul.

In this special edition of V2_'s Test_Lab program at ISEA2011, a selection of the outcome of the Summer Sessions 2011 will be presented. As it is custom to V2_'s Test_Lab, the projects will be demonstrated live and the audience will be invited to ...

Ricardo O’Nascimento (BR) is an artist and researcher on the field of new media and interactive art. He investigates body-environment relations focused on interface development for worn devices, interactive installations and hybrid environments.

TK 730 from the E-Textile workspace is part of the sixth international conference TEI, which focuses on the latest results in tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction. TEI 2012 takes place from 19th to 22nd February at Queen's Human Media Lab in ...